Where are you going to stop?--I mean at what stage of development? I
presume you have not a "whole lot" of poems really writ, and have not
been feeding them to me, the least good first, and not in the order of
their production. So it must be that you are advancing at a stupendous
rate. This last[5] beats any and all that went before--or I am
bewitched and befuddled. I dare not trust myself to say what I think
of it. In manner it is great, but the greatness of the theme!--that is
beyond anything.
[5] "The Testimony of the Suns."
It is a new field, the broadest yet discovered. To paraphrase
Coleridge,
You are the first that ever burst
Into that silent [unknown] sea--
a silent sea _because_ no one else has burst into it in full song.
True, there have been short incursions across the "border," but only
by way of episode. The tremendous phenomena of Astronomy have never
had adequate poetic treatment, their meaning adequate expression. You
must make it your own domain. You shall be the poet of the skies,
the prophet of the suns. Don't fiddle-faddle with such infinitesimal
and tiresome trivialities as (for example) the immemorial squabbles of
"rich" and "poor" on this "mote in the sun-beam." (Both "classes,"
when you come to that, are about equally disgusting and
unworthy--there's not a pin's moral difference between them.) Let them
cheat and pick pockets and cut throats to the satisfaction of their
base instincts, but do thou regard them not. Moreover, by that great
law of change which you so clearly discern, there can be no permanent
composition of their nasty strife. "Settle" it how they will--another
beat of the pendulum and all is as before; and ere another, Man will
again be savage, sitting on his naked haunches and gnawing raw bones.
Yes, circumstances make the "rich" what they are. And circumstances
make the poor what _they_ are. I have known both, long and well. The
rich--_while_ rich--are a trifle better. There's nothing like poverty
to nurture badness. But in this country there are no such "classes" as
"rich" and "poor": as a rule, the wealthy man of to-day was a poor
devil yesterday; the poor devils of to-day have an equal chance to be
rich to-morrow--or would have if they had equal brains and providence.
The system that gives them the chance is not an oppressive one. Under
a really oppressive system a salesman in a village grocery could not
have risen to a salary of one million dollars a year because he was
worth it to his employers, as Schwab has done. True, some men get rich
by dishonesty, but the poor commonly cheat as hard as they can and
remain poor--thereby escaping observation and censure. The moral
difference between cheating to the limit of a small opportunity and
cheating to the limit of a great one is to me indiscernable. The
workman who "skimps his work" is just as much a rascal as the
"director" who corners a crop.
As to "Socialism." I am something of a Socialist myself; that is, I
think that the principle, which has always coexisted with competition,
each safeguarding the other, may be advantageously extended. But those
who rail against "the competitive system," and think they suffer from
it, really suffer from their own unthrift and incapacity. For the
competent and provident it is an ideally perfect system. As the other
fellows are not of those who effect permanent reforms, or reforms of
any kind, pure Socialism is the dream of a dream.
But why do I write all this. One's opinions on such matters are
unaffected by reason and instance; they are born of feeling and
temperament. There is a Socialist diathesis, as there is an Anarchist
diathesis. Could you teach a bulldog to retrieve, or a sheep to fetch
and carry? Could you make a "born artist" comprehend a syllogism? As
easily persuade a poet that black is not whatever color he loves.
Somebody has defined poetry as "glorious nonsense." It is not an
altogether false definition, albeit I consider poetry the flower and
fruit of speech and would rather write gloriously than sensibly. But
if poets saw things as they are they would write no more poetry.
Nevertheless, I venture to ask you: _Can't_ you see in the prosperity
of the strong and the adversity of the weak a part of that great
beneficent law, "the survival of the fittest"? Don't you see that such
evils as inhere in "the competitive system" are evils only to
individuals, but blessings to the race by gradually weeding out the
incompetent and their progeny?
I've done, i' faith. Be any kind of 'ist or 'er that you will, but
don't let it get into your ink. Nobody is calling you to deliver your
land from Error's chain. What we want of you is poetry, not politics.
And if you care for fame just have the goodness to consider if any
"champion of the poor" has ever obtained it. From the earliest days
down to Massanielo, Jack Cade and Eugene Debs the leaders and prophets
of "the masses" have been held unworthy. And with reason too, however
much injustice is mixed in with the right of it. Eventually the most
conscientious, popular and successful "demagogue" comes into a
heritage of infamy. The most brilliant gifts cannot save him. That
will be the fate of Edwin Markham if he does not come out o' that, and
it will be the fate of George Sterling if he will not be warned.
You think that "the main product of that system" (the "competitive")
"is the love of money." What a case of the cart before the horse! The
love of money is not the product, but the root, of the system--not the
effect, but the cause. When one man desires to be better off than
another he competes with him. You can abolish the system when you can
abolish the desire--when you can make man as Nature did _not_ make
him, content to be as poor as the poorest. Do away with the desire to
excel and you may set up your Socialism at once. But what kind of a
race of sloths and slugs will you have?
But, bless me, I shall _never_ have done if I say all that comes to
me.
Why, of course my remarks about * * * were facetious--playful. She
really is an anarchist, and her sympathies are with criminals, whom
she considers the "product" of the laws, but--well, she inherited the
diathesis and can no more help it than she can the color of her pretty
eyes. But she is a child--and except in so far as her convictions
make her impossible they do not count. She would not hurt a fly--not
even if, like the toad, it had a precious jewel in its head that it
did not work for. But I am speaking of the * * * that _I_ knew. If I
did not know that the anarchist leopard's spots "will wash," your
words would make me think that she might have changed. It does not
matter what women think, if thinking it may be called, and * * * will
never be other than lovable.
Lest you have _not_ a copy of the verses addressed to me I enclose one
that I made myself. Of course their publication could not be otherwise
than pleasing to me if you care to do it. You need not fear the
"splendid weight" expression, and so forth--there is nothing
"conceited" in the poem. As it was addressed to me, I have not
criticised it--I _can't_. And I guess it needs no criticism.
I fear for the other two-thirds of this latest poem. If you descend
from Arcturus to Earth, from your nebulae to your neighbors, from Life
to lives, from the measureless immensities of space to the petty
passions of us poor insects, won't you incur the peril of anti-climax?
I doubt if you can touch the "human interest" after those high themes
without an awful tumble. I should be sorry to see the poem "peter
out," or "soak in." It would be as if Goethe had let his "Prologue in
Heaven" expire in a coon song. You have reached the "heights of dream"
all right, but how are you to stay there to the end? By the way, you
must perfect yourself in Astronomy, or rather get a general knowledge
of it, which I fear you lack. Be sure about the pronunciation of
astronomical names.
I have read some of Jack London's work and think it clever. Of
Whitaker I never before heard, I fear. If London wants to criticise
your "Star poem" what's the objection? I should not think, though,
from his eulogism of * * *, that he is very critical. * * *
Where are you to place Browning? Among thinkers. In his younger days,
when he wrote in English, he stood among the poets. I remember writing
once--of the thinker: "There's nothing more obscure than Browning
except blacking." I'll stand to that.
No, don't take the trouble to send me a copy of these verses: I expect
to see them in a book pretty soon. * * *
Sincerely yours, AMBROSE BIERCE.
[The Olympia, Washington, D. C.,
March 31, 1902.]